American Traitor Read online

  He said, “It’s not me. I was captured. I was just doing what I was told.”

  The Snow Leopard leaned forward and said, “You’re good at doing what you’re told, yes?”

  “Yes, yes, yes. I’ll set them up for you, if you want. I’ll do what you ask.”

  The tattooed man trapped his hands behind his back, torqueing his arms up until he yelped. Feng said, “I’m not against you. I can help! I’m on the inside now. They think I’m with them. But I’m not.”

  The man with melted hands grabbed him by the hair, jerking him off balance to the water. He fell to his knees, looking up at the Snow Leopard, the river rushing by a foot in front of him. He said, “Please, I can help.”

  “I’m sure you can. I believe you. You’ll do what I ask?”

  “Yes, yes. I promise.”

  The Leopard nodded at the tattooed man and said, “I’m asking you to not hold your breath. This has to look like an accident, and it takes a lot longer if you do.”

  Feng sprang up, and was immediately shoved back onto his knees, the mud seeping through his clothes. He flailed his arms above his head, trying to break the hold on his neck, but failed. He shrieked, the sound lost in the rushing of river water. He felt his head being lowered, shouted, “No, no, no!” and then it went under the surface. He fought valiantly, then weakly, then his body went slack. The Leopard watched him struggle with the detachment of someone drowning a cat in a bag. When it was done, he pushed Feng’s body into the current of the river, the carcass bobbing away from him.

  He said, “So it’s true. We’ve been penetrated somehow.”

  Acid hands said, “Maybe we should back off for a little bit.”

  The Snow Leopard picked up the satchel, opened it, then said, “Maybe we should ramp it up. Quit hiding. Take it to them for a change.”

  He turned to the tattooed man and said, “It’s not like we don’t have the support.”

  Chapter 5

  I saw Amena react to what I’d said about being the bad man, and realized I’d made a mistake. I really didn’t want to give her any worries about being in the danger zone, like we were leaving her to the wolves, and my comment was not a way to start a new relationship—especially given her past.

  It was a missed opportunity. Something I was famous for, at least in my own mind. But it didn’t matter what I said. It only mattered what she thought. She leaned back from my hug and said, “You mean that? You’ll take care of the bad man if he comes?”

  Standing behind her, Jennifer said, “What? What was that? What did Pike say?”

  I grinned and tried to cover up the comment. “Nobody is going to hurt you now. Ever. We’re here for you. It’s a new life.”

  She teared up again and said, “I want to go with you. For the honeymoon.”

  Jennifer knelt down next to me, giving Amena the full force of her love. She took her hands and said, “We’re not going on a honeymoon. I don’t know how you got that in your head.”

  Jennifer left her eyes and glared at me, saying, “We won’t have a honeymoon until after a formal ceremony.” She turned to Amena and said, “With you as a bridesmaid.”

  Amena’s eyes widened, now broken from the previous discussion, amazed at the invitation. She said, “Really? Like an American wedding?”

  She looked at me, and I said, “Of course, doodlebug.”

  She turned to Jennifer for confirmation and Jennifer said, “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  And that was enough.

  Amena was one complicated young woman, not the least because she’d had her mother murdered in Syria, and then saw the rest of her family slaughtered in Europe by a group of assholes who deserved to be planted in the ground. At the time, I’d become a farmer of sorts, planting all of them with extreme prejudice, but what had stuck with me was Amena herself. And it wasn’t misguided sympathy I saw in her, but her moral core.

  I wouldn’t go so far as to say she was a Mother Teresa, because she had a little pirate in her, but then again, that’s what I truly loved about her. She wanted a family more than anything on earth, and we were trying hard to make it happen. At the end of the day, she was still raw, unsure of who to trust, which was why I was paying a fortune for a private boarding school.

  Grolier Recovery Services was headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina, and our house was right off of East Bay Street, on the peninsula, a fixer-upper that had been paid for by our “real” contracts with GRS. Jennifer had come up with the initial idea to sponsor Amena at Ashley Hall, an all-girls school literally about a stone’s throw away that had a boarding program for international students. Having been an institution of higher learning since Christ was a corporal, it had a plethora of foreign students—now mainly from China—and had readily agreed to allow Amena to attend, provided we sponsored her.

  The school’s motto was Possunt Quae Volunt, or PQV, which was Latin for “Girls who have the will have the ability.” Something I really liked. But they’d never met Amena, and we were about to test whether her will would crush their ability to rein her in, because she was definitely a handful.

  We loaded up the car and cut across the peninsula, dodging the tourist vehicles that couldn’t find their way out of a wet paper bag, all of them confused by the byzantine one-way streets that made absolutely no sense. We finally turned onto Smith Street, right outside the school. In the rearview mirror I saw Amena grow a little wary when we parked in the fire lane. I turned to her and said, “Hey, this is what you wanted. I know it’s a little scary, but it’s for the best. You’re in America now.”

  She said, “Would you have sent your daughter here?”

  It was a profound question that hung in the air. My daughter was dead, and she knew the love I held for her. I said, “Yes. Cross my heart. Yes.”

  She said, “Okay, Pike. But only if I get to go on the honeymoon.”

  That brought a smile to Jennifer’s face. She leaned over and brushed Amena’s cheek, saying, “Okay, but you can’t stay in our room.”

  Amena laughed and opened the door, right as my cell phone rang with a peculiar tone that Jennifer recognized. It was an encrypted call. Meaning it was from the Taskforce.

  Before I got a word out, Jennifer said, “Come on, little one. Let’s go check in. Pike can catch up.”

  They left, and I answered the phone with a little trepidation. Only the Taskforce could destroy everything I had planned.

  “Hello?”

  “So how’s the little refugee hand grenade working out?”

  I recognized the voice of George Wolffe, the deputy commander of the Taskforce, and then was forced to remember he was now the commander, as Kurt Hale—the original commander—had been blown up in my Jeep the year before. The emotion was a whipsaw, none of it reduced by the march of time.

  I said, “Hey, sir, we just got here. She’s checking in now. What’s up with the call?”

  He laughed at the angst in my voice and said, “Nothing, man. I’m really just checking in. The entire Council is worried about her. They just want to know the plan is going okay.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief and said, “That’s good to hear, because it is. She’s signing in right now and we’re headed out to Australia, just like we talked about. What’s up with the Taskforce?”

  He knew what I was asking. It had been a rough year for our organization, and we’d been on hold since Kurt’s death, with all the hand-wringers in the Oversight Council waiting on the shoe to drop that might expose our operations, but as far as I could tell, that hadn’t happened. Mainly because I’d had a couple of Israelis tie off some loose ends outside of the Taskforce charter.

  I heard him sigh, then say, “I wish Kurt were still here. I don’t want this responsibility.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “China. China is going on. They’re kicking our ass all over the place. Hong Kong is going nuts, they’re taking over the South China Sea, they’ve infiltrated every university we have, stealing our technology, and they are locking up the Muslim Uyghur community into concentration camps.”

  I laughed and said, “Why does the Taskforce care about that? Sounds like a traditional intelligence community problem.”

  Because our unit was illegal from the jump point, Kurt Hale—our deceased commander—had developed strict limits to Project Prometheus, understanding the threat the unit could pose. Not wanting it to turn into an American Gestapo force, he had designed the Oversight Council and then dictated that we would only deal with substate terrorist threats. We wouldn’t do state-on-state activities, like Wolffe was describing. Well, we had a few times in the past, but it was always the exception to the rule. Wolffe’s tone told me the rule might be changing.

  Wolffe said, “Yeah, you’d think so, but I’m headed into a National Security Council meeting as a backseater about selling F-35s to Taiwan. I’m supposed to just sit and listen, and nobody’s told me why they demanded I be there, but you know they wouldn’t ask me if they didn’t want me to do something. What I’m hearing on the trap lines is that the established architecture can’t penetrate what’s going on in China. In 2010 the Chinese broke our covert communications and rolled up our entire network. The CIA is impotent now. They want something else.”

  And now the hairs really stood up on my neck. “Something like me? Like Grolier Recovery Services? Tell me that’s not true. We don’t even have a targeted threat. I don’t do intel collection. I do the finish. Period.”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. At least I don’t think so. I probably said too much. Get Amena situated and you’re clear to head to Australia. Tell Dunkin I said hello.”

  I saw Amena come back out from the front of the school, looking at me. I said, “Will do, sir. Gotta go. But give me a call if you need me. I’ll sort those fucks out.”

  He laughed and said, “You’ve never even been to China.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the Chinese.”

  I heard nothing and said, “I gotta go. Good luck,” and hung up the phone. Some things were more important than national security.

  I exited the car, seeing Jennifer standing behind Amena with an administrator next to her, Jennifer’s eyes wet. I walked to them and said, “So this is it, doodlebug. You make it through two weeks, and you can make it through anything.”

  I saw her lip quiver and squatted down, saying, “Hey, come on. I was teasing. You’ve been through much worse than this. Now all you have to do is make friends. I promise nobody here is going to try to hurt you.”

  The administrator, having no idea what Amena had been through in life, said, “That’s true, honey. You’ll love it here.”

  I wanted to smack her.

  Amena said, “I want to come with you guys.” And it broke my heart. But that was the whole point of leaving. She was very strong, and she’d be okay. I wrapped her in my arms and said, “Two weeks, doodlebug. We’ll be back in two weeks.”

  She said, “Promise?”

  “I promise. I’m pretty sure Jennifer will get us into more trouble than you’ll find here.”

  She wiped her eyes and gave me a fake smile. I returned a fake one of my own, not realizing how true those words would become.

  Chapter 6

  George Wolffe pulled into the checkpoint for the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, right across from the White House, and halfway hoped they’d turn him away. After all, he wasn’t a member of the National Security Council, and as such, he didn’t have an “all access” pass. All he had was a name, and he hoped the name wouldn’t be enough to grant him access. He’d never been given a badge for the White House grounds, precisely to conceal the organization he worked for—Project Prometheus.

  Badges had trails, and trails led to discovery.

  He was ostensibly a GS-15 in the CIA, working as an analyst in the counterterrorism center. He had to be formally put on an access list each and every time he entered. He hoped this time it would fail.

  It did not.

  The guard handed him a badge with a giant “V” on it, meaning visitor, escort required, and waved him forward. He pulled into a spot and was met by some intern who looked to be about the age of the cheese in his refrigerator.

  “George Wolffe?”

  He exited the car and said, “Yeah. Who are you?”

  With an attitude bestowed upon him by the perceived power he held, but belied by the pimples on his face, the man said, “I’m your escort. Follow my rules.”

  He turned and began walking. Wolffe rolled his eyes and fell in line behind him across the grounds to the building.

  They walked up the stairs, passing through two more security checkpoints, then entered a conference room. The only man Wolffe recognized was the national security advisor, Alexander Palmer. The rest were strangers.

  The guide said, “You sit in the back. The back row. Do not talk. You’re just here to listen.”

  Palmer came over and the young man grew compliant, saying, “Sir, here’s George Wolffe. Like you asked.”

  Palmer waved him away with a hand. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks.”

  The kid nodded, waiting, and Palmer said, “What do you want? An invitation to leave?”

  Wolffe saw the disappointment on the kid’s face and thought it wouldn’t be his last. The kid wanted the trappings of power without actually sacrificing for them. He basked in being the chosen one but had never earned the right to be called such. Like just about every single politician in Washington, DC.

  Wolffe shook Palmer’s hand and said, “So why am I here?”

  “This is a subcommittee meeting of the nonproliferation taskforce for Asian affairs.”

  “Yeah? No offense, but so what? Why did you ask me to be here? What does this have to do with the Taskforce?”

  “Nothing . . . yet. I just want you to hear the debate. That’s all. We’re about to discuss the sale of F-35s to Taiwan.”

  Wolffe squinted his eyes and said, “What does the nonproliferation taskforce have to do with selling next-gen fighters to Taiwan? And beyond that, what the hell am I doing here? Come to think of it, what are you doing here? At a subcommittee meeting?”

  His words caused a few people to look his way. Palmer raised his hands and said, “Hey, calm down. Lower it a notch.”

  Wolffe looked left and right, saw the interest, and said, “Yeah, okay. What do you want me to hear?”

  Palmer glanced at the podium, where a man was about to start speaking, and said, “I work for the president of the United States. He wanted you to hear this. That’s all I can say. You need to take your seat.”

  Palmer walked away, and Wolffe wondered what was happening. If President Hannister wanted him here, it was for a significant reason, but he’d heard no traction for China via the Taskforce. There were no terrorist threats coming from the country. He’d told Pike a story that he’d thought was just spitting in the wind, getting him prepared for the impossible, but now it looked like the impossible was coming true. But he was still the commander. The one who dictated Project Prometheus actions. He took his seat at the back of the room.

  A man in a coat and tie brought the meeting to order, but he was clearly military by the fact that his suit looked like it had been purchased off the rack at JCPenney.

  “So, let’s cut to the chase on this. I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about extraneous stuff. We’re here to decide whether the sale of F-35s to Taiwan is in the national interest. First on the order is that we don’t have any to sell. Taiwan is begging for them, but we don’t have them. But if we do in the future, do we recommend selling them to the ROC?”

  Giving deference to Alexander Palmer, he said, “Sir, do you want to add anything here?”

  Palmer went to the front of the room and said, “Okay, this is a big decision, not without consequences, which is why I’m here. Do we want to sell F-35s to Taiwan? If we do, it’ll be a direct provocation to China. If we don’t, we’re signaling a loss of support to Taiwan. It’s a no-win, but it’s in front of us.”

  Since its creation in 1949, the Republic of China had been one of the most delicate balances in the entire portfolio of U.S. national security engagements, and like the shifting sands on a beach, it had gone through many changes with respect to the United States, from outright support in the early days, to Nixon’s détente with China in the seventies, and then finally culminating with President Carter formally shifting diplomatic recognition of the country from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China in 1979, for the first time officially recognizing Beijing as the rightful power, and causing the abandonment of diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

  Through it all, to this day, the United States had maintained a vague commitment of defense of Taiwan against Chinese encroachment—defined nebulously so as not to give Taiwan the courage to demand independence under the umbrella of American firepower, but still to give China a great enough pause that they wouldn’t outright attack.

  And that dilemma was driving the debate about selling the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to Taiwan.

  A woman with a prim and proper blouse, looking like she should have been teaching English at a boarding school, said, “Not to be a minion of the fabled ‘military-industrial complex,’ but we just cut off Turkey from its purchase of F-35s for its acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defense system. That leaves a few F-35s in the wind. It’s not like we’re talking about ramping up production. We have them sitting around, and selling them to Taiwan is a hell of a lot better than selling them to Turkey. My opinion.”

  Sitting in the back, George Wolffe liked her opinion.

  A man at the end of the table scoffed, then said, “So we just jerk those fighters away from Turkey and sell them to Taiwan? I understand we have an issue with Turkey right now, but taking their agreed purchase and selling it to Taiwan will be a mess of the first order. Turkey is a NATO partner. Taiwan is not. Why are we even talking about this?”

  The woman gave him a laser gaze and said, “The weapons are already ‘jerked’ from Turkey. That’s a done deal, by lawmakers. Not by you on this council. It’s done. They bought a Russian air defense system against our expressed objections and lost the purchase.”